16 THE DARWINIAN THEORY 



Charles Lyell, 1797-1875, like Hutton, was a 

 Scotchman, and was born in the year of Hutton's 

 death. Lyell worked out in detail Hutton's sugges- 

 tions, and collected with great care all that was known 

 of the changes now going on in the world, and of 

 the causes that produce them ; the rate of denudation 

 and the amount carried down by streams ; the mode 

 in which plants and animals are buried in mud, peat, 

 and sand. The first volume of his " Principles of 

 Geology" was published in January 1830, seven 

 months before the Paris controversy. In it he 

 dealt with the changes continually taking place on 

 the earth's surface ; the rising up and the subsidence 

 of the earth's crust ; the action of rivers and volcanoes ; 

 and showed how the present configuration of the 

 earth was due to these causes. He pointed out that, 

 causes now in action and influences now at work 

 are not merely competent to produce the present 

 state of things, but must inevitably have done so. 

 He showed the history of the earth to be continuous 

 and uninterrupted, and that to explain its present 

 condition and past history we have simply to look 

 around us. 



Lyell's facts were numerous and his reasoning 

 cogent ; his conclusions therefore steadily gained 

 supporters. It is a curious fact that, as regards 

 fossils, Lyell himself declined to apply to them the 

 principles he so justly insisted on for the crust of 

 the earth. Yet it was precisely by applying a 

 similar train of reasoning to the further problem 

 that the final solution was attained, and by the study 

 of what is going on around us at the present day, 



